Despite interoperability trials and demonstrations involving alternative data center fabric standards, a non-standard fabric technology is said by proponents to be at the front of the pack.

Fenway Park may be 100 years old this season but that doesn't mean the Boston Red Sox baseball stadium is stuck with antiquated technology.

John D'Ambrosia, Chief Ethernet Evangelist in the CTO Office at Dell (he came onboard when Dell bought Force10), is a founder of the Ethernet Alliance and currently serving as its chairman. Network World Editor in Chief John Dix recently caught up with D'Ambrosia for an update on the Alliance and Ethernet advances.

A lot has happened with Ethernet in service provider networks in the past 10 years. And the Metro Ethernet Forum has been behind a lot of that progress. From promoting and education the industry on the merits of Ethernet in the service provider network, to actually defining carrier-class Ethernet specifications, the MEF has been at the forefront of advances in the technology on a larger-than-enterprise-network scale. Here are the major milestones the MEF has achieved over that time period:

Despite the fact that Facebook famously said that it needs Terabit Ethernet, the wait for the technology could last years, experts say.

For the first time in its history, the IEEE has released two Ethernet standards simultaneously: 40 Gigabit Ethernet (40GE) and 100 Gigabit Ethernet (100GE), both defined by the 802.3ba Task Force.

The IEEE's 802.3az standard for Energy Efficient Ethernet is expected to be finalized by next year, but it's not too soon to think about how your IT organization can migrate to EEE.

This year saw the slow, painful dismantling of Nortel. Its gradual exit from the tech scene played out the entire year, as each month brought news of more layoffs, markdowns or sell-offs.